life, it suffered from the delusion that Englishmen who had enjoyed some share in the politics of their native land could be permanently and happily ruled by governors chosen in London and sent over with a retinue of servants. None of the three charters granted to the corporation, 1606, 1609, and 1612, contemplated any degree of autonomy in the colony itself. In the contest with the Crown, the rights of the Company and its stockholders were enlarged, but to the end the settlers in Virginia remained legally subjected in all important things to the will of the distant corporation.
Governor after governor was dispatched to manage the settlement in the name of the Company: Delaware with the pomp of an Oriental potentate; Dale, harsh, brutal, and "efficient"; Argall, a petty tyrant who robbed the settlers and cheated the corporation; Yeardley, a liberal gentleman who "applied himself for the most part in planting tobacco"; and Wyatt, during whose five years of service the colony passed from the Company to the Crown. Some of these governors displayed conspicuous merits, but they all owed their appointments to politics and intrigues, not to demonstrated competence in administration.
With quaint irony Captain Smith told the story: "The multiplicity of Governors is a great damage to any state; but the uncertain daily changes are burdensome, because their entertainments are chargeable, and many will make hay whilst the sun doth shine, however it shall fare with the generality." Not until the Company became engaged in a violent quarrel with the Crown did it, with a gesture of magnanimity, seek an alliance with the colonists and by the establishment of the House of Burgesses in 1619 grant them a voice in local government.
While the London Company was feeling its way to policies that promised success, the colonists in Virginia were learning their own lessons in days full of trouble. The first summer for them at Jamestown in 1607 was one long, drawn-out agony, unbearable heat, unwholesome water, and spoiling food striking them down with disease and
